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There are many services that will send out a single
custom greeting card ).
This allows for “one to one” marketing. Yes, it can be time
consuming to make a card for each partner, but you can
make one for an event or webinar or product launch and
send it to 20 or 25 partners. Or it could be a potential
partner that you really want to land.
Attention is the prize today. Partners can spend ev-
ery day, all day on webinars and live events. The inbox
is full of newsletters, webinar invites, promotions, prod-
uct announcements and (lately) logo changes from both
channel managers and the companies. It is too much
info to be processed by a busy agent.
Attention is not only the prize – it must be treated
with respect. That means adding value at each touch
point. I am a firm believer that not every email has to be
about the company. It can be about hiring, technology,
leasing, running a business or anything that is valuable.
Partners are running a business and face the same prob-
lems every business faces: payroll, hiring, firing, book-
keeping, etc. Those are ways to add value. It happens
on Facebook and Twitter. People share interesting stuff
(beyond cat videos and memes).
Another story line is adjacency. Most vendors have
a large catalog of services, many of which partners are
unaware. For example, hosted email, cloud backup, con-
ferencing, managed security or any
add-on services may lie adjacent to
what the partner is currently selling
(typically WAN). This is a different ap-
proach, since getting partners to upsell
services that they have never sold before is so far outside
the comfort zone as to be alien.
Again, a marketing campaign around upsell and
cross-sell is required. Include stories about robust solu-
tion sales beyond network services. If a quote request
comes in for a bank, send an email about the package
that banks typically buy, including security, managed
services, compliance, whatever. The complete story can
give a partner a better idea as to what is available and
what the buyer behavior is. That can earn you some
gravitas with the partner. It means higher ARPU and
higher commissions. Win-win.
Now, some channel managers will either think they
are needlessly bugging their partners with these emails
or that this is the job of marketing only. Well, not true, if
we are looking at the success of the program, the channel
manager and their partners. Everyone’s job is
sales and marketing.
Peter Radizeski is President of RAD-INFO
INC, a telecom consulting firm in Tampa, Fla.
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69 January - February 2016 | ChannelVision